I’m happy to be able to let folks know that I’ll be on a panel tomorrow night discussing the CPD‘s new e-book Pushing Our Luck. My much more distinguished and esteemed colleagues, Miriam Lyons and John Quiggin will be joining me.

Pushing our Luck is the latest in the CPD’s series of election year ideas discussion starters.

It’s part of our work towards non-partisan and progressive policy development, and the curation of policy debates.

The event is free and so is the finger food. You’ll have to pay a little for a glass of vino. The garden space at the back of Avid should be very pleasant if (as I expect) we have a balmy Brisbane Spring evening.

Join us for a panel discussion chaired by Mark Bahnisch, along with the Centre for Policy Development’s Director and editor of Pushing Our Luck, Miriam Lyons, and contributing authors for a lively discussion on the ten big issues that will shape this country well beyond the 2013 election.

The Centre for Policy Development (CPD) has published Pushing Our Luck a compelling case for solutions to problems awaiting Australia’s next government. With insights from experts on ten big issues that will shape this country well beyond the 2013 election Pushing Our Luck will revive your zest for public debate and give us all a chance to set the daily grind of modern politics aside for a moment and focus on what really matters for Australia’s future.

Miriam Lyons started by telling us that 3 out of 4 Australians are in the top 10% wealthiest in the world, but people here feel more financially insecure than many in Europe including Spain!

She pointed out that insecurity related to what we expected to happen in the future.

Also, and this was a big take-away of the night, inequality does matter to well-being and the benefits of our wealth are increasingly unequally spread.

We are under more pressure at work than in comparable places, there is greater casualisation, we spend less time eating, sleeping and relaxing, and we are increasingly making co-payments for such services as health and education.

There was much talk about the best way of messaging and achieving political engagement.

The Left is on the side of rationality and The Enlightenment.

There is hope for better times and the need to do some imaginative thinking about the issues we face. Part of the problem is that Labor has actively embraced a small government ideal. This is going to have to change.

The book Pushing our luck: ideas for Australian progress has 10 chapters addressing big issues we face. I ordered a copy and expect it to be well worthwhile.

The Australian Economic Review, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 176–84
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Happiness and the Human Development Index: Australia Is Not a
Paradox
Andrew Leigh and Justin Wolfers
‡Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University
‡Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Centre for Economic Policy

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2006 The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research
Published by Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

Abstract
In ‘Happiness and the Human Development Index:The Paradox of Australia’, Blanchflower
and Oswald (2005) observe an apparent puzzle :they claim that Australia ranks highly in
the Human Development Index (HDI), but relatively poorly in happiness. However, when we
compare their happiness data with the HDI, Australia appears happier, not sadder, than its
HDI score would predict. This conclusion also holds when we turn to a larger cross-national
dataset than the one used by Blanchflower andOswald, when we analyse life satisfaction in
place of happiness, and when we measure development using Gross Domestic Product per
capita in place of the HDI. Indeed, in the World Values Survey, only one other country (Iceland)
has a significantly higher level of both life satisfaction and happiness than Australia.
Our findings accord with numerous cross national surveys conducted since the 1940s,
which have consistently found that Australians report high levels of well-being.

* We are grateful to Andrew Norton for supplying us withhappiness data for Australia in several recent years, and to
David Blanchflower, Nick Carroll, Richard Easterlin, Paul Frijters, Andrew Norton, Andrew Oswald, Betsey Stevenson,
Brandon Verblow and two anonymous referees foruseful discussions and comments on earlier drafts.